The women's archaeological team at the pingshang site in Chongqing ZhongXian County.
The daily life of the archaeological site.
Zhang Yalan at work.
This is the first archaeological team in China with all women. The team has developed from the initial 5 backbones to the current 11 people, covering field excavations, scientific and technological archaeology, artifact restoration, drawing and other professionals.
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Born in 1994, Zhang Yalan has lived in chongqing Jiangjin Stone Buddhist Temple for a year and a half. She just went down the mountain before the Spring Festival, and she has gone up the mountain again in the past two days, and she will continue to stay. Her original career was set in interior environmental art design, and after graduating from university, she went to the Chongqing Cultural Heritage Research Institute and became an archaeological cartographer. The object depicted by the brush shifts from above ground to "underground".
The archaeological workstation of the Stone Buddha Temple is a standard "river view room", the door is the Yangtze River, the other side of the river is the old town of Jiangjin, and the lights of ten thousand homes will fall together with nightfall. If it rains, the river surface is foggy, like a scroll of ink painting. Chongqing is rainy, Zhang Yalan sighed every time, "the camera can't shoot this beauty."
The scenery is beautiful, and there is another side to her daily life. "As long as I wear enough dirt to work, no one can know me after work," Zhang Yalan felt, this sentence is about himself, "Fully armed, do you know?" Long-sleeved trousers, fisherman's hat with the largest brim, preferably the one with a mask, just shows the eyes."
Makeup is unrealistic, sunscreen is the only "truth", after all, in the sunshine of Chongqing, waterproof cosmetics can not stop the constant sweat. Every day after work from the archaeological site, the first thing Zhang Yalan did was to put down the long hair that had been tied tightly for a day, and the second thing was to wash her face mixed with sweat and sunscreen. "We usually discuss what styles of clothes and what colors of hair are popular now, and after a heated discussion, we say, alas, there is no way to get it, we can only think about it."
In 2017, the Women's Archaeological Team of the Chongqing Cultural Heritage Research Institute (hereinafter referred to as the "Women's Archaeological Team") was established, and Zhang Yalan joined the archaeological team that year, and was the youngest girl in the team.
The archaeological team was once all male
Yan Ni, the leader of the women's archaeology team, is a post-80s graduate of Jilin University in 2006, majoring in archaeology. When she first arrived at the Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (the predecessor of the Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage - reporter's note), she was the only female front-line archaeologist in the "active service".
In the past, the vast majority of those who insisted on front-line archaeology were boys, after all, they had been in the wild for many years, and it didn't sound "suitable" for women. For example, in the summer of Chongqing, a group of boys with bare arms and pants and slippers can't do it; for example, going to the toilet is also a troublesome thing, after all, the archaeological site will not build a toilet for you.
Things changed in 2017.
The professional and technical personnel of the Chongqing Municipal Cultural Heritage Research Institute are stretched thin, so both men and women, just arrived at the first few years of the unit, all under the archaeological site. Yanni said that from the perspective of personal career, students who have just left the campus can only transform the theory taught by the school into practice in the vast world.
In 2012, Yanni obtained the qualification certificate of archaeological excavation leader; in 2017, the archaeological work in Chongqing was extremely heavy and the staff was urgently short, and the girls who were originally scattered in various archaeological teams were formed as the "Women's Archaeological Team". This is the first full-female archaeological team in China, and Yanni is the project leader. The team has developed from the initial 5 backbones to the current 11 people, covering field excavations, scientific and technological archaeology, artifact restoration, drawing and other professionals.
Cai Yuanfu is a conservator who began to work in the 1980s, starting as an apprentice for more than 30 years. When I first arrived at the Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, my colleagues in the front line of archaeology were basically all men. She joined the women's archaeology team at the beginning of the team and is the oldest sister in the team.
Although the restoration of cultural relics is not "digging", restorers still need to work on archaeological sites. Chongqing's urban development is rapid, and in the process of development and construction, it is necessary to excavate and protect the underground cultural relics along the route in advance. From the perspective of the entire industry, cultural relics restorers are scarce resources, so although they are almost at the age of retirement, Cai Yuanfu still follows the archaeological team, and once he goes out, it is ten days and a half months, or even a few months.
Can women do it?
The establishment of the women's archaeology team has allowed the original scattered forces to be aggregated, and incidentally solved life problems such as going to the toilet. But "digging" sounds like a job that combines concreteness and brain power, can women do it? More and more women are entering the frontline archaeology industry, what advantages do they have?
"Archaeology is actually a more stylized work, a project starts, strictly in accordance with the scientific excavation process, the efficiency of a team can be estimated, there is no special difference between men and women. On the contrary, the coordination of personnel in the team is more important. After spending a few months in one place and not seeing your family, it is important for your teammates to accompany each other and relieve your emotions. Yanni said, "Girls are more delicate, and sometimes in the interpretation of some relic phenomena, they can start from sensibility and bring new perspectives." ”
From interior designers emphasizing artistic creation to archaeological cartographers emphasizing the restoration of essence, Zhang Yalan was a little uncomfortable at the beginning, and it was not only a profession that needed to change, but also a way of thinking. The first cultural relic she painted was a Song Dynasty cup, how to draw the mouth, how to draw the base, there are rules, but also take a caliper to measure little by little. Later, while painting, Zhang Yalan found that when painting the ornaments of flowers, birds, fish and insects, it seems that a little artistic expression also needs to be added to give it vividness on the basis of precision.
"Examination" is ancient, but the technical requirements for archaeologists are new. Zhang Yalan said that in addition to the basic skills of hand-painting, the current archaeological drawing should also be combined with digitization, such as the overall digital three-dimensional modeling of a site. "My sense of accomplishment comes from the fact that I finished a painting of artifacts. If my paintings are collected archaeological reports and books, and can be seen by many people and recognized by the industry, then I will have a greater sense of accomplishment. ”
As far as the division of labor in the cultural relics restoration industry is concerned, Cai Yuanfu feels that women have certain advantages: "We will be very careful and very careful about the understanding of an artifact and observing the change of an artifact. ”
Cai Yuanfu's happiest moment was to "resurrect" the fragment into its original form. She likes artifacts from a long time ago, "Neolithic, Xia Shang Zhou... It's more challenging for me." On the first day of 2021, she spent time at the archaeological site, a place of fragments of "bottles and cans" and half-repaired semi-finished products, which was her New Year's gift.
Cold and hard work to ignore home?
In 2020, there was a news that Zhong Fangrong, a girl from Leiyang, Hunan Province, chose the College of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University with the fifth highest college entrance examination result in the province. The reason why it has become news is because many people's first reaction is that the archaeology profession is "unpopular", "hard" and "not making money". For girls, there may be another line, "regardless of home".
Yanni's son is almost 7 years old, every time she travels, her son has to hug his mother and cry, "Once I came home from the construction site once, he hugged me and said mom, you are not going to leave forever, and I said that I was about to cry."
Zhang Yalan has been in the remote mountain for a long time, and he can't see a few people, so it is difficult to "play friends". Her parents were very anxious, introduced her to several blind dates, and the leaders of the team also cared about their subordinates, as long as it was a blind date, each time it was allowed to leave.
Yan Ni recalled that in early 2007, she was investigating at the Xiaonanhai Reservoir in Jiangjin, and there was no dry road to pass on the return trip, and she took a two-hour barge ride, and people froze. Back in town, the team members were gray-headed, and the captain invited him to eat the hot pot, "This is the hottest hot pot I have ever eaten."
With the overall development of society, the conditions for archaeological work are getting better and better, and the accommodation and transportation environment are gradually no longer the reasons for restricting women. "Contemporary women are not satisfied with society's positioning of themselves, we are more independent, have our own professional goals, and are willing to fight for them." Yanni said.
"Many people think that girls are different from boys, in fact, it is because of the traditional social concept of girls' requirements, such as requiring girls to take care of the family." Now that society is diversified, more and more people understand the archaeology industry, and more and more girls are joining this industry, which is very good. Zhang Yalan said.
Before doing this trip, Zhang Yalan's knowledge of archaeology was almost zero, which was also the norm for her peers around her. Over the years, with the emergence of documentaries such as "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", relatives and friends around Zhang Yalan have also begun to "inquire" about her work.
Museum fever is no longer news, young people's interest in the field of culture and bo is "moving forward", archaeology as the most front-line work, what can be more curious than directly from the soil to "dig" out a hidden past. Zhang Yalan said that when archaeology slowly reaches the public and is no longer a mysterious discipline, it will attract more and more young people to join, regardless of gender.
As of now, Zhang Yalan has not taken off the list, she revealed the type of her appreciation: "I like interesting souls." ”
The biggest difference is having more "life"
If we must say the impact of gender on archaeologists, the biggest possibility is that the members of the women's archaeological team have more "lives" after a day of work.
Skincare was a key topic of discussion among the team members, and the top priority was sun protection. In the summer, Chongqing is a furnace, and the construction site under the scorching sun is unobstructed. Seeing Yanni at the archaeological site, there is a good chance that she is wearing quick-drying clothes and quick-drying pants, in fact, she likes to wear a cheongsam every day. Once, she was busy at the construction site from May to September, using two large bottles of high-power sunscreen.
Archaeological sites employ migrant workers, and team members sometimes live in migrant workers' homes. A group of girls played with the host's children, chatted with the hostess, chose dishes, cooked... The construction site is mostly in the wild, and flower picking is also a major amateur activity for them, finding a variety of bottles, carefully arranging flowers, and placing them in the room.
Many times, dogs remain an important security measure at archaeological sites. At the Jiangjin Stone Buddhist Temple, everyone has 4 Chinese pastoral dogs. The captain originally gave the dog a very literary name, and the team members barked and barked, and they were called "little flowers" and "little blacks" straight...
"Suffering is suffering, but we can see a good scenery and come into contact with simple people." Yan Ni remembers that in 2017, the women's archaeological team was responsible for the excavation of the Pingshang site in Yangdu Town, Zhong County, Chongqing. The site is a small village that is not rich, and in the late stages of the excavation, the villagers sent mature guiyuan to the familiar archaeological team.
For the archaeologists, the "river view room" of the Stone Buddha Temple is not unusual. Yan Ni described it this way: When doing surveys and explorations in the Zhouhuang Tomb in Fuling, next to the reservoir, in the early morning, the mist slowly drifted from the water, there were many pine trees on the mountain, and the sunlight leaked down from the gaps in the branches; in the summer, on the construction site along the river, sometimes rows of black shading nets were erected, and the wind blew, and the net surface bulged, like a sail that set sail... (China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Jiang Xiaobin)